(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

1 Chronicles 15 is where we see David bringing back the Ark of the Covenant the right way this time. If you remember a few weeks ago, they had a bad experience where they wanted to bring back the Ark of God because they had not inquired after it in the days of Saul. And when they were bringing it back, they put it on a new cart. Instead of following God's commandment of carrying it upon the shoulders of the Levites, they pulled it by oxen on a wheeled cart and Uzzah put forth his hand to steady the oxen and Uzzah died and that just kind of soured the whole event. And David was afraid of the Lord that day and didn't understand why it was happening. Well now David has figured things out, he's gotten it right. Because he thought, oh man, God's just so terrible of a God or dreadful or fearful that we just don't want to get near him because he'll just kill us. He didn't understand why Uzzah was being killed. Well then the Ark had resided at the house of Obed-Edom the Gittite for three months and while the Ark was there, God really blessed Obed-Edom. So when David saw and the rest of the people saw how Obed-Edom was being blessed for having the Ark, then you know what they figured out? The Ark isn't the problem, we're the problem. We did something wrong here. So obviously David has searched the scriptures now and figured out what he did wrong because now in chapter 15 he has the Levites carry it and then he admits that they did it wrong the first time. Look what the Bible says in verse 1, and David made him houses in the city of David, which is of course Jerusalem, and prepared a place for the Ark of God and pitched for it a tent. This is before the temple was there. Then David said, none ought to carry the Ark of God but the Levites, for them hath the Lord chosen to carry the Ark of God and to minister unto him forever. And David gathered all Israel together to Jerusalem, to bring up the Ark of the Lord unto his place, which he had prepared for it. And David assembled the children of Aaron and the Levites, and I'm not going to read that again, we already read that before, the list of all the people and the numbers. It says in verse 11, And David called for Zadok and Abiathar the priests, and for the Levites, and for Uriel, Esiah, and Joel, Shemaiah, and Eliel, and Amenadab, and said unto them, Ye are the chief of the fathers of the Levites. Sanctify yourselves, both ye and your brethren, that ye may bring up the Ark of the Lord God of Israel unto the place that I have prepared for it. For because ye did it not at the first, the Lord our God made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order. So it's good that he's admitting, hey look, we made a mistake, we were wrong. Because he had kind of a bad attitude a few chapters ago when this happened. But now we see he's admitting that he's the one who made a mistake and that they didn't do things right. Now we're going to do it right and have the Levites do it. And you know, when we find ourselves in doctrinal error or a sin in our life and somebody calls us out on it or maybe we just figure out on our own that what we were doing was wrong, you got to be willing to sometimes say, hey, that was a mistake, what I said was wrong, what I did was wrong, or you know, I preached that wrong, or I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have handled it like that, and learn from that and move on. And not be this person who just thinks they've never made a mistake and so then they just dig in and just keep preaching the wrong thing. Because well, that's what I preached 10 years ago or 15 years ago and I don't want people to say that I changed, so I guess I'm just going to have to preach that way until I die. Well no, if you're wrong, change. Isn't that what we expect people to do when we confront them with the word of God and when we go out soul winning and people believe the wrong gospel, we expect them to change and believe the right gospel. And we want people to get off this pre-trib rapture that they've been sucked into, this false doctrine that's taken over most Baptist churches even though it's a relatively newer doctrine and when they're shown that from the Bible, we expect them to change, amen? And not to just be stuck on that. So we need to be willing to change when we've done wrong, when the preaching proves us wrong or when the Bible proves us wrong or just whatever the case may be, we need to be ready to be corrected and David showed this throughout his life. Even when he committed that horrible sin of adultery and murder with Bathsheba, well at least when he was called out on it, he said, I've sinned and he admitted it and he confessed and forsook it and repented. So even though there were a lot of people in the Bible who probably didn't do as bad a thing as that, you know, he still ended up being greatly blessed by God because at least when he did wrong, he made it right, he admitted he was wrong. So we should always be willing to repent when we've been wrong about something and that's what we see in this chapter, him just admitting, hey, we did it wrong last time, now we're going to do it the right way. So it says in verse 14, so the priests and the Levites sanctify themselves to bring up the ark of the Lord God of Israel and the children of the Levites bear the ark of God upon their shoulders with the staves they're on as Moses commanded according to the word of the Lord. So this was in the Bible all along. They could have read this and done it right from the beginning. Verse 16, and David spake to the chief of the Levites to appoint their brethren to be singers with instruments and music, salt trees and harps and cymbals, sounding by lifting up the voice with joy. So the Levites appointed He-man, the son of Joel and of his brethren, Asaph, the son of Barachiah and of the sons of Marariah, their brethren, Ethan, the son of Cushiah, and he begins to name a whole bunch of names. Verse 19, so the singers, He-man, Asaph, and Ethan were appointed to sound with cymbals of brass. And if you remember, these are some guys that are named in the book of Psalms. You'll see some Psalms from Ethan and Asaph and guys like that in the book of Psalms. And then it lists a whole bunch of other names, Zechariah, Aziel, Shema, Ramoth, and on and on. And then at the end of verse 21, it says, and Geol and Azaziah with harps on the Sheminith to excel. So I want to point out that term to excel. And then it says in verse 22, in Canaena, chief of the Levites was for song. He was instructed about the song because he was skillful. And this is something that we see in the Bible a lot, these terms of excelling, being skillful, and the Bible tells us to play skillfully with a loud noise. So obviously, everything that we do in life, we should always be giving our best. So whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, the Bible says. And so when people play piano or guitar or do song leading or play a saxophone or a trumpet or a bass guitar, we want to do our best. And God is pleased when people have put in time and practice. And obviously, God understands that different people are different abilities. And I think God is pleased when a child sits down at the piano and does their best and rattles out nothing but the blood or whatever the song. But you know what? God is also pleased when people actually take time to become skillful and practice and do a really good job. You know, that actually glorifies and brings honor to God. There's a weird doctrine out there that says that we can have no musical instruments in church. And I think this is one of the most bizarre doctrines. And you say, well, what does it matter? It's not a salvation issue. Well, it's obviously not a salvation issue. It's obviously not very high on the list for doctrinal importance. But yet when I hear someone talk about the fact that it's unscriptural to have musical instruments in church, I'm very scared when I hear that. Even though it seems like a totally unimportant issue, like, well, who cares? What's the big deal? But it's just so shockingly unscriptural that it just makes me think, like, what else is wrong with this person? Because that's just too weird. And if you've ever heard people go through the mental gymnastics to explain why no musical instruments in church, it's super weird. Now, let me just explain something to you. There's no verse in the Bible that says, don't have musical instruments in church. Don't play musical instruments. Don't praise the Lord on a musical instrument. There's no verse like that. So this doctrine is based on no scripture whatsoever, because there's not a single verse that says, thou shalt not. Yet we have hundreds of verses that are telling you to praise the Lord on an instrument of ten strings. Praise Him on the cymbals and the high-sounding cymbals. Praise Him with the psaltery and harp. Praise Him on organ and tim- you know, He's listing all these things, telling us to praise Him on musical instruments, telling us to sing praise with a lot of- then we have all these examples of people in the Bible, in the temple, in the tabernacle, using musical instruments. Then we have the Psalms talking about musical instruments. We even have Habakkuk talking about praising the Lord on a musical instrument. I mean, it's just- it's everywhere, but they say, well, you know, I don't- we don't see it in the New Testament church, but here's the thing, we don't see a bunch of examples of them singing a capella either. God's just not going into the song service, because it's just not the focus. See, the focus of the book of Acts and the epistles is not the music, because God's house is not a house of music, it's mainly a house of the Word of God being taught and preached in a place of soul winning and so forth. Now look, the music is important, I'm not trying to downplay the music, but there are churches today that are overemphasizing the music. I mean, there are churches where you'll go into a service, and the service is an hour and a half long, the sermon's 15 minutes, the sermon's 20 minutes, and you will literally get over an hour of music in a lot of these fun center churches, then a little 15 minute and then you have these churches like Hillsong or whatever, that's all it's known for is the music. It ought to be called Hellsong because of the demonic doctrine of that place and the wickedness there, but the point is that, you know, no great movement of God's people has ever been built on music. It's always been built on the preaching of God's Word. It's always been built on soul winning, it's always been built on God's Word being preached, people being saved, people being baptized, people being, he didn't say go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them and singing with them. Now again, I'm not trying to downplay music, but what I'm saying is music is not the emphasis in Acts or any of the epistles, so it shouldn't surprise us that we don't see musical instruments because we don't really see a lot of singing in the first place. Now obviously we see Jesus and the apostles sung a hymn when they were at the Last Supper and they went to the Mount of Olives, but I guarantee you that there was a ton of other singing going on all throughout the book of Acts, but he just doesn't bother to tell us about it. He doesn't tell us every little thing. You know, then they walked in, then they set up chairs, you know, then they got behind the pole, you know. It's unnecessary to give that kind of detail. But what we do know is that the Bible tells us in the New Testament to speak to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in our heart to the Lord. Well, here's the thing. What in the world sense would it make for the New Testament church to be commanded to sing the psalms and then the psalms are filled with references to what? Musical instruments. So I guess we're supposed to come to the New Testament church and sing about musical instruments, but it's a sin if we play the musical instruments. It's so dumb. It's based on no scripture. Don't base what you believe on what the Bible doesn't say. Base what you believe on what the Bible does say. I mean, the Bible doesn't mention them having musical instruments in the New Testament church. That's not an argument because we've already had hundreds of mentions in the Old Testament and nothing in the New Testament told us that it had changed. So here's a good rule of thumb. Anything that the New Testament doesn't talk about changing, leave it the same as the Old Testament. The Old Testament said don't marry your sister. Does the New Testament have to say that again or can we just remember that from the Old Testament? The Old Testament says not to see grandma's nakedness. Do we need another verse in the New Testament? No, we don't. Because guess what? Unless God said that changed, then we stay with the teachings of the Old Testament. Otherwise might as well just throw out the Old Testament. No, God teaches over and over again the virtue of playing skillfully on musical instruments and so that's what we will continue to do. We have musical instruments in the church and God is pleased. We praise God using musical instruments and singing. Now there's nothing wrong with singing a cappella because, for example, our church for the first two years we didn't have a piano player. I know how to play piano player but I was the song leader so I can do both. So basically for the first two years we just did a cappella and it was great. I personally do not like canned music. I do not like this thing of like a recorded music or a little keyboard MIDI thing going on or a recording. People have often said, hey, can you make a recording for churches that don't have a piano player? And I just tell those people, look, why don't you just sing a cappella until you get a piano player? There's nothing wrong with singing a cappella. And plus, you know, usually once a church gets to a certain size, usually somebody knows how to play a guitar or a piano or something that will help enhance the music service a little bit. So anyway, we see here this emphasis on being skillful and excelling at music. Those are virtues. Let's jump down to verse 25. So David and the elders of Israel and the captains over thousands went to bring up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord out of the house of Obed-edom with joy and it came to pass when God helped the Levites that bear the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, that they offered seven bullocks and seven rams. So they did it God's way and God helped them. You know, when they did it the wrong way and the oxen stumbled, God punished them. But now that they're doing it the right way, God's helping them. So when we follow God's commands, it's a little harder, right? Because carrying something on your shoulders is harder than it being pulled by animals on a cart. But because they're doing it God's way and carrying the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders, God helped them get the job done and God will help us if we obey and do His work the way He wants us to do it. Look at verse 27. And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen and all the Levites that bear the Ark, the singers and Kanaanah, the master of the song with the singers. Now watch this next phrase. This is going to become important in a moment. David also had upon him an ephod of linen. Now I want you to remember this. At the beginning of verse 27 it says that he was clothed with a robe of fine linen and then it says that he also had upon him an ephod of fine linen. Now the word ephod simply means garment or that which is worn, but it is specifically referring to a garment that is worn for a religious purpose. So this is what the priests would wear, an ephod. We don't know exactly what this garment was like, what it looked like. Nobody really knows and the word ephod just means that it's something that you put on. It's a garment. It's some article of clothing that's worn in a religious context. So David's wearing that and in addition to that he's wearing a robe because a robe is an outer garment and we think of priests wearing robes all the time, right? Because pre- good night, I said priests tonight. Kings. We think of kings wearing robes all the time because I remember when we were kids and we wanted to play king. You know when you're a kid, you play make believe and you dress up. You basically get like a bathrobe, right, when you want to be the king. You put on a crown. You throw on a bathrobe over your clothes and it's like that's your royal robe because we think of like the kings of France and England and from that medieval period they would wear these robes and they've got like a fur collar going on, right? So that's what we think of and that, you know, it's always been that way where kings would wear robes. A lot of people will say Jesus wore a robe but in reality when you study your Bible you never find Jesus wearing a robe ever except when he's being beaten and spat on. They put a robe on him when they put the crown of thorns on him because they're making fun of him and saying, hey, old king of the Jews. So they put a purple robe on him. They spit in his face, hit him in the head with a stick and that's when he has the crown of thorns on. But you'll never see Jesus wearing a robe in his everyday life. The only other time you'll find Jesus wearing a robe is when he returns because he's the king and so he's wearing kingly garments, okay? So Jesus in his everyday life dressed in the clothes of the working man, he did not wear kingly robes. He did not go in soft clothing and soft raiment and fancy things like that. But David, we see, he's wearing the ephod and he's wearing the robe and this pictures Jesus Christ because of the fact that Jesus Christ is both our high priest and he's our king. And remember in the book of Chronicles, especially David is a picture of Jesus. Jesus is called the son of David and he's the priest and he's the king, both. It says in verse, and we're also going to come back to that, it's important all this clothing that he's wearing. Look at verse 28. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and with sound of the cornet. David is a type of trumpet and with the trumpets and with symbols making a noise with psalteries and harps. And it came to pass as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the city of David that my call, the daughter of Saul looked out at a window, I'm sorry, the daughter of Saul looking out at a window saw King David dancing and playing and she despised him in her heart. And then it just rolls right into the next story. So they brought the ark of God and set it in the midst of the tent and so forth. Now let's get a little more on this story. Let's go back to second Samuel chapter number six about my call despising David in her heart when she looks out the window. I really want to focus on this story. Now remember when we read the book of Chronicles, there are a lot of things that are left out. Things in first Samuel and second Samuel, first Kings, second Kings are a lot more detailed usually than they are in the book of Chronicles. The book of Chronicles leaves a lot of things out and these two books just have different purposes. Second Samuel and first Chronicles are emphasizing different things. Just like God gave us Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and they emphasize different things. Now people who are called textual critics and Bible scholars, they usually have a lot of doubt in God's word. They don't have total faith in God's word or else they'd probably be preachers, pastors, missionaries, evangelists, soul winning church members. But instead they like to just kind of pick apart the Bible and just overthink things and just lose faith in the Bible and start just looking at it from a man-made perspective. And what these textual critics will say is like, well, because they believe man wrote the Bible. They'll often say, well, you know, whatever's the more expansive book, whatever has the more detail was written later. Whatever tells you less detail is older, right? So that's why the modern versions, they leave out so many verses because they're like, well, whichever one has the least stuff in it, that's the more accurate because this stuff's, uh, coming later, which is obviously completely false. It's things were taken out later on, but they say, they always say that Mark is the first gospel that was written. They say Mark's the oldest gospel. Why? Well, cause it's the shortest. So they, you know, they don't believe that God's inspiring different authors to focus on different things. They just think, well, Mark wrote his book and then Matthew took what Mark wrote and kind of added some stuff, beefed it up a little bit, you know, cause they just have this attitude of whatever's the most expansive came later. Well, we know that God is inspiring his word and that different things are being included because of the fact that God's trying to make a different point in each book. Like in Matthew, he's emphasizing the kingship of Christ. He's emphasizing that he's the king of the Jews. He's emphasizing that old testament tie ins and stuff like that. Whereas when we get in the book of Mark, it focuses more on the works of Jesus. It has the least of Jesus is preaching and it shows us more his deeds and his actions. When we get into the book of Luke, you know, uh, which is very long, the longest book of the four gospels, even though it only has 24 chapters, they're longer than Matthew's chapters. When we read the book of Luke, we see Jesus as the son of man and the humanity of Christ is emphasized. Then we get to the book of John. The fact that Jesus is the son of God is emphasized and the book of John is also the most negative book toward the Jews. Very negative. Uh, that's where those long passages in John chapter eight where he's saying, you know, you're of your father, the devil, and he, when he refers to their holidays, I go, yeah, the feast of the Jews, the Jews sought to kill him. The Jews did this. The Jews did that. So they're, they're kind of making different points. They're emphasizing different things. Now Matthew is negative toward the Jews, but in a different way because in Matthew he's more appealing to the Jews like you guys are wrong and here's why. Whereas in John, it's more like these people are of the devil because it's more written to a different audience. Okay. By the way, modern Bible versions now are taking out negative references to the Jews. I saw this. Somebody posted this where a modern Bible version, you saw that too, huh? Where they, they posted this where it says saying the Jews, they changed it to the people, the rulers, the leaders, the religious people. It said, no, that was the Jews that did those things. So you know, leave the book of John the way it is, amen. But what I want to point out about the fallacy of this is that I don't think anyone argues that first and second Kings were written after first and second Chronicles. First and second Chronicles are clearly written after first and second Kings. Okay. It's the, it's, it's the latest, it's one of the latest books written in the Old Testament. We proved that back in the sermon on chapter three. We proved how you can show when Chronicles was written because there's a genealogy that goes, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years after David and all. You know, you can, you can do the math of when they got back from the captivity. It still gives a bunch of generations. So first and second Chronicles are way later, yet it has less information. It's leaving things out. And in fact, these two books refer to each other. You know, there are places when you're reading in Kings and it says, hey, it's written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah or Israel. And then same thing when you're reading in Chronicles, it'll say, oh, it's written in the book of the Kings. Who knows what I'm talking about where it refers you back and forth. Okay. Why? Because we know that first and second Chronicles was written to replace first and second Kings. It's written in addition to first and second Kings because God wants to give us two different angles. And by comparing scripture with scripture, we can get a more complete picture. And by reading each book by itself, we get a certain picture that God's trying to show us with that book, what it's emphasizing. So you know, there's a virtue in reading Chronicles by itself or reading Kings by itself. And then there's another virtue where you start comparing them and learn even more so that, you know, we're supposed to study it both ways. Now let's compare scripture with scripture here because in Chronicles, he tells us that Saul's wife or Saul's daughter, Michal, looks out the window and despises David in her heart, but it doesn't give us any details about that story, right? So we're kind of left wondering, what's that about? Well, second Samuel gives us a lot more detail. Chapter six, look at verse number 14. And David danced, this is second Samuel 6, 14, and David danced before the Lord with all his might. And David was girded with a linen ephod. We saw that from Chronicles, right? So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet. And as the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord, and she despised him in her heart. So here we pretty much have the same story, except we have a little bit of a different detail that he's leaping and dancing with all his might, so he's jumping in the air. So David's just really excited, they're playing the music, they're sounding with the cymbals, and he's jumping and dancing around, he's real excited, okay? Now jump down to verse 20, the Bible says, Then David returned to bless his household, and Michal, the daughter of Saul, this is his wife, came out to meet David and said, How glorious was the king of Israel today, who uncovered himself today in the eyes of the handmaids of his servant, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovered themselves. So he gets home, he's all excited, he's jumping for joy, he's happy, he walks in, and his wife just is on his case. The moment he walks in the door, she just starts dumping on him the moment he walks in, right? And of course, David gets angry, and he says some things that he shouldn't have said when he kind of blows off his mouth there, but she's definitely in the wrong here. I mean, we know from scripture that David is praising God, he's leaping and dancing and jumping for joy, because he's happy about bringing the ark of God, he's doing everything right in this story, God's blessing him, everything's going great. His wife has this horrible attitude, where she's just despising, look, it's never right, ladies, for you to despise your husband in your heart. And you know, if you start despising your husband in your heart, this is the kind of stuff that's going to come out of your mouth, right? You see him pull into the driveway, and you're just already despising him in your heart, and then he walks in and you're going to start saying all this dumb stuff to him and being rude to him. You know, the Bible says that wives are to submit themselves unto their husbands, and it also says, let the wife reverence her husband. Is this reverence? No way. It says, reverence your husband, respect your husband, treat him with honor and dignity that he deserves. That's not what we see here. And so then he responds in verse 21, David said to Michael, it was before the Lord. Now who did she accuse it of being in front of? She's accusing him of trying to impress the ladies. Oh yeah, you just shamelessly uncovered yourself in front of the handmaidens. So she's accusing him of putting on a show to impress the ladies, when in reality he's doing it before the Lord. It was before the Lord, which chose me before thy father, burn. Which chose me before thy father and before all his house to appoint me ruler over the people of the Lord over Israel. Therefore will I play before the Lord, and I will yet be more vile than thus. See this is where he's saying some dumb stuff he shouldn't say. That's not a nice thing to say, right? I'll be more vile than thus and will be based in my own sight, and of the maidservants which thou has spoken of, of them shall I be had in honor. Obviously he's lost his temper at this point in saying some dumb things. Therefore my call the daughter of Saul hath no child unto the day of her death. Now why did she have no child unto the day of her death? Because he's not getting physical with her anymore is what that means. You know a lot of people misunderstood this, that God is like cursing her womb or something. No see this is David and he's practicing polygamy. He has other wives. We already know that from the story. Now polygamy is not God's plan. It's something that the Bible commanded against and specifically said that kings are not to have multiple wives but they did it anyway. And so David has multiple wives so he has the luxury of basically just saying well nuts to you then and just not touching her with a 10 foot pole for the rest of his life. Now obviously you know as a Christian today you know that's not an option for you. You have one wife. You have to make things work. Now it shouldn't have been an option back then because they should have only had one wife as well. But you know a guy like David he violated that and you know that's a whole other sermon. But you know we see David has a bad reaction here but she's definitely 100% wrong. You know here he is just serving God. Everything's good and then she just hits him with this out of nowhere. Now there's a lot that we can learn from this but before I get into what we can learn from this let me just point out how the modern versions twist this story. I got the NIV here okay and I'm going to read for you verse number 20 from the NIV. I want you to look down at your King James. Now this is the old NIV the one from 1984 so this is the one that's been out forever. They came out with a new one in 2011 but this is the 1984 edition that I have here and you look down at the real Bible. It says in verse 20 when David returned home to bless his household Michael daughter of Saul came out to meet him and said, how the king of Israel has distinguished himself today disrobing in the sight of the slave girls of his servants as any vulgar fellow would. So the NIV has him undressing. Now that's not what the Bible is saying here at all that's stupid. And if you get the new NIV the 2011 NIV it says that he's running around half naked. Half naked. Now this is totally stupid because if we actually compare scripture with scripture when we read the story in what? Chronicles he's wearing an ephod and he's wearing a robe. He's definitely not half naked. He's fully dressed in multiple layers of garments. He is clothed. The ephod is a normal article of clothing and when the Bible says here that she accused him of shamelessly uncovering himself, stop talking about him getting undressed. What she's talking about is that he's just kind of cutting loose and getting wild and he's not reserved. He doesn't have his normal kind of facade. He's not having his company manners. And this is just because he got caught up in the moment of just being excited about the things of God. And it's great. You know the Bible is giving as a positive example that he's he's playing music because he was a musician as well so he's playing music with all his might and he's dancing and leaping for joy and singing and happy and you know sometimes we get in the moment right where we're having a good time and we just kind of let our hair down and cut loose a little bit and we're not really worried about what people think about us. And that's what it means here when it says that he shamelessly uncovered himself. So she's just saying that he got too wild and that he's trying to impress these ladies. Not anything to do with him getting undressed. You know the reprobate lead singer from U2 Bono and I've preached a whole sermon against him called The Gospel According to Bono. It was like seven years ago or something. But you know one time I was in the bookstore and they had a book of a King James Bible book of Psalms introduction by Bono. I'm like what in the world. And I'm looking at the introduction by Bono and Bono's interpretation of this was that he was dancing completely naked just stark naked. I mean this is the kind of junk that comes from the reprobate mind reading the Bible. No normal person is going to come up with that and these new versions they put in all kinds of weird stuff like that. And they don't even they don't even make sense like oh he distinguished himself. That's not what distinguish means. He distinguished himself by you know getting half naked. Well being distinguished is the opposite of getting half naked. Being distinguished means that you're actually very civilized and that you're very proper. And not only that to distinguish oneself would be to set yourself apart as different. But in the next breath she says oh as any of the other vile fellows would then that's not distinguishing yourself. So the NIV sentence doesn't even make sense when compared with itself. The sentence contradicts itself. That's how reading the NIV is. You know why it says distinguish is because they're just they just have to make it different to keep selling new Bibles. So they just keep getting out the thesaurus and just putting in different synonym different synonym but they don't even notice that the sentence doesn't even make sense anymore. He distinguished himself by doing what everybody else does. It says as any fellow would. Well then that's not distinguishing yourself. Definitely not very distinguished behavior you know disrobing or whatever it's accusing of doing. So anyway it just goes to show you you know we're not King James only because we're crazy. We're King James only and we're crazy. No I'm just kidding. We're not King James only because we're crazy. We're King James only because the other Bibles are just filled with stupid stuff. And I could just spend you hours showing you the stupid stuff in the New King James the NIV the ESV. You know we got New World Order Bible versions back there on the shelf. If you have any questions about why we're King James only that DVD should clear all that up. So anyway I just want to point that out to you. But what can we learn from this story here. What we can learn first of all is that if the wife despises the husband in her heart it's going to come out of her mouth because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speak if you want to speak respectfully to your husband you need to start actually having respect for him in your heart and reverencing him in your heart. The Bible says even as Sarah also obeyed Abraham calling him Lord whose daughters you are as long as you do well and are not afraid with any amazement. But what's interesting if you go back in Genesis and try to find the part where Sarah called Abraham Lord it was actually something that was in her internal dialogue. Like you don't see her saying to Abraham yes Lord. What you see is that she within herself says well how am I going to have a child you know since I'm old and my Lord is old also. She's calling him Lord in her head. So what does that mean. The point is that's how she thought of him. She reverenced him in her heart. She had respect for him in her heart. And if you respect your husband in your heart then your language toward him in the way that you talk to him is naturally going to be right. You know a wife could say well I just feel like I have to walk on eggshells around my husband seems like I'm always you know saying something that he thinks is disrespectful. You know you wouldn't have to be so careful if you get your heart right because if your heart was right then the right things would come out. But when you got all this junk in your heart resentment bitterness disdain for your husband it's just going to come spilling out. Then you got to work really hard to make oh I better not say that as all these wrong things are flooding to your mind it'd be a lot easier to actually get your heart right. And then you could actually just speak to your husband and naturally you'll say nice things to him and not be like Michael. This definitely didn't work out very well for Michael. But one of the problems with Michael is that you know first of all she's obviously disrespectful. She doesn't reference her husband but also she's showing too much jealousy. She's an overly jealous wife because here's a situation where there's no need to be jealous. Here's David out there with the men. I mean you know I spared you reading the names a second time but brother Jesse read all the names a moment ago. Those were a lot of men's names. So the emphasis on the chapter here you know there's a lot of men there. It's not like he's just out partying with a bunch of ladies. He's out there with the Levi's. He's out there with Asaph. He's out there with Ethan. He's out there with the men serving God praising God. And yeah of course there are men and women there because the whole nation is gathered together and so forth. But she's just being jealous for no reason. She has no reason to be jealous. He's out there just serving God and she's just like well but those ladies were watching you or something. Now there is a place for jealousy in marriage. We should be jealous of our wife or jealous of our husband but we shouldn't take it to these extremes. What do I mean by that? Well obviously we shouldn't just have this attitude of yeah my wife can go out to eat with other men and hang on the phone with other men. It's no problem and be alone with other you know it's like whoa buddy you know you need to have some jealousy over your wife there and keep her only for you. And obviously it's totally normal for a wife not to want her husband out palling around with women from work or palling around with women from church and hanging on the phone and you know long phone calls, going out to eat, you know writing letters back and forth or whatever. You know there are times when obviously either a husband or a wife would be quite justified to step in and say hey I think you're getting too close to so and so. You know I don't think you should be palling around with her. I don't think you guys should be you know hanging on the phone and going out to eat and being so buddy buddy. You know when you cross the line or when you get close to the line amen. We want to make sure that we keep ourselves above reproach and obviously as men once we're married guess who our female friend is in our life. It's our wife. You know you say well I had all these female friends before I was married. Well you know it's time to just move on from those friends. You can't just still have all these really tight friends of the opposite gender after you're married. You know I don't want my wife to have all these really close male friends. That's weird. It's inappropriate. You know so there's a there's a lot. But at the same time I've seen a lot of overly jealous women and I've seen some overly jealous men but I've seen this a lot in women where literally their husband will get in trouble because of how a woman treated him. Like that's his fault or something like a woman's friendly to him in public and he's getting chewed. It's like what in the world. As if he can even control it. But even more so I've seen women where it's like they don't want to let their husband out of their sight. You know their husband can't even go anywhere without them being there just to just to supervise him and make sure. But you know your husband has to go out and go to work and live his life and he can't have you guarding him and holding his hand all the time. You know and if your husband's that bad to where he's just going to commit adultery the second you're not watching you know you've got bigger problems anyway. You know or if your wife has to be just watched all the time or she's just going to just commit adultery with the first guy I mean that you've got big problems. You know what I mean. I mean that's just weird. You know we as adults need to have a little bit of freedom in our lives. And not to just have be on a leash. You know I don't keep my wife on a leash. She doesn't keep me on a leash. I mean you know yeah we do have a relationship where jealousy comes up where I would say hey look you know I don't want you being buddy buddy with that person or you know it's not like I have to say that because she already knows that that's the policy. And the same thing where she would would obviously not be pleased with me doing the same thing hanging around with women and talking to them all the time and this and that. You know so you want to have that appropriate level of jealousy because of the fact that you know we're supposed to keep ourselves only unto each other. So it's totally reasonable to say hey you shouldn't have close friends of the opposite gender. You shouldn't be palling around alone together and and and long phone calls and and out to dinner and so that's just that's just common sense right. But the world today says like oh well if you don't let your wife do that stuff you're abusive. You know or if you if you're if your wife won't let you hang around with other women well you're just you know you're just in a you know you have a psycho jealous wife or something. But that's not true because there is a reasonable amount but but you know what sometimes it does cross the line into psycho territory where just you know your husband just can't even talk to a woman for 30 seconds without you just freaking out and panicking. You know that's overboard and that's what we see Mike out here just totally unjustified. He's just panicking about David here and accusing him of things that he didn't do. So you don't want to be like a Michael. It's going to cause strife and friction in your marriage if you have this over the top jealousy you know a reasonable amount of jealousy. Yes when there's actually a threat when there's actually something going on when there's actually inappropriate behavior that you could point to and say to your husband listen you know I'm not and obviously you wouldn't approach it the way she did anyway. You'd approach it kindly and say hey listen I'm not comfortable with you spending so much time with so and so or being on the phone with her or going out to eat with her. You know you need to tone that down. But come on. You know be reasonable. Obviously we all go out in the world and interact with people. You know I'm going to go out and in the course of work I'm going to interact with women. I'm going to interact with women out in public in my job. That's just normal. My wife is going to deal with men in her just dealing with the household and you know when she's purchasing food and when she's doing this that or the other. I mean it's just there's there's there's a normal amount of contact that goes on and we don't want to go overboard. Now who goes overboard? The Muslims go overboard. And you know the Muslims they feel like they just have to lock up their wives under lock and key and just cover them up to where all you see is just these little slits of their eyes and they like if they don't their wives are just going to be out committing adultery with everybody under the sun. Now I'm not an expert on Islam but I know enough about it to know that it's total garbage. But you know who's ever heard of the Arabian Nights. You know the stories about like Sinbad and all that. Well actually Sinbad was not technically part of the original Arabian Nights book. You know it's just a lot of stories about genies and all kinds of just these wild eyed fairytales. Well what's interesting though is if you've actually read it who's actually read the book 1001 Arabian Nights. OK. Four other people besides me but anyway four or five. Well if you actually read the book you know you'll see that it's all centered in the Islamic world. OK. So everybody in it is talking about Allah and they're talking about Mohammed and stuff like that. But in this story book the theme that just keeps coming up over and over again is that just like every woman is just ready to commit adultery at the drop of a hat with any man unless they're just kept under lock and key. You know what I mean. They're just they're just ready to commit adultery. That's what the whole book is based on because the girl has to keep telling stories so that her husband doesn't kill her because he's afraid she's going to commit adultery. So he's just like well I'm just going to kill you and then you can't commit adultery because you'll be dead. OK. That's the premise of the book. And Scheherazade has to keep telling the stories just to stay alive. But the point is that that's a stupid philosophy that says well I got to lock my wife up and dress her in a hijab or she's just going to commit adultery. That's not true. You know our wives and look is that what the Bible teaches. No. You see women in the Bible going places and doing things. I mean you see the virtuous woman. She's delivering girdles to the merchant. She's getting up early and bringing her food from afar. She's going to the grocery store. She's going doing all these things. And yet she's remaining pure and virtuous. Imagine that. It's actually possible for women to actually live a normal life and do this stuff and still be faithful to their husband. So we don't want to just be this over the top. Where were you. Where have you been. What are you doing. You know just freaking out all the time. But if there's an actual cause to be jealous then by all means you know you should pipe up kindly and respectfully and say hey. You know you could tell your husband hey I'd prefer you not to do that. But here's the thing. Wives don't have authority over their husband. So they can't tell their husband you're not going to do that anymore and that's the end of it. They can't do that. All a woman can do is just suggest to her husband hey I don't want you spending so much time with so and so the female. I don't feel comfortable with you hanging on the phone to her. All she can do is suggest that. Now the husband on the other hand has authority over his wife and he can actually tell her you're not talking to that guy again. She can't talk to him anymore. You know that's just the end of that. Because the man has authority. So we need to understand this is not the same authority structure. But it should be the same amount of respect that I should respect my wife and I shouldn't have interactions with women that I wouldn't want her having with men. Right. If I don't want her flirting with men then I shouldn't be flirting with women. You see what I'm saying. If I don't want her to be doing X Y and Z then I should do the same standard. I should hold myself to that same standard. Does that make sense? So we want to make sure that we keep ourselves pure and that we stay away from adultery and don't even get close to it. Don't even tempt it. But we don't want to become these overly jealous psycho husbands or wives who just think that if we don't just monitor our spouse with an ankle bracelet all the time then you know they're going to commit adultery. And you know what. When you see people sometimes who just have all these like radical safeguards in place like I know where my I've heard I've even heard people brag about it. I know where my husband is like every minute of every day and I know exactly where he's at and you know what I mean like when he leaves or goes to work it's like OK I'm on my way home now. It's like why aren't you here. There's traffic I'm coming you know. When you see these women who are just like I know where my husband is 24 7 and I monitor him and make sure that's you know what that's ridiculous because men are the in authority they don't need their wives policing them like that. You know and also an over the top policing of your wife like that. I mean I don't know where my wife is 24 7. I don't just sit there and just what are you doing now. Where are you now. You know what's going on now. My GPS monitor of you tells me that you're moving west on 60. What's going on. Where are you heading. Why because I have my own stuff to do right. So you know as long as we love each other and as long as we have boundaries that we agree on and we shouldn't need to just have this over the top jealousy. So anyway there's some things that we can learn from the story we get a little more light on it from Second Samuel. But the last lesson I want to give you is just that you know when you when you have a great victory. It's often followed by something negative because the devil wants to attack sometimes. So you'll have a great victory like yeah we're so excited things are going good. The devil will sometimes drop a bomb on you like this like you get home and then there's some problem at home or you check your bank account and you know it's a problem or whatever or you get sick or whatever. So you know we have to understand that life is never going to be perfect. When things are going awesome and you're jumping up and down you're like best day ever. It's not going to last. So just be ready to come down from that. You know what I mean like don't get too excited on the good days and don't get too down on the bad days because the bad when it's a bad day a good day is coming. And when when it's a good day a bad day is coming. And the Bible says the Lord has set the one against the other. You know that is what God has ordained for our lives we have good days we have bad days. So we can't just be like things are going to be great now we're never going to have any problems again I'm glad we got all that behind us that that that ooze up business you know we got that behind us and then you get home and your wife chews you for no reason. See what I'm saying. So there's there's going to be problems all the time in our life when it's not one that you get your marriage all dialed in it'll be the finances. You get the finances dialed in it'll be your health. You get your health dialed in it'll be the church. You know there's all something's always going to be falling apart friend. This is life. So just get used to it and praise the Lord anyway let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer. Father we thank you so much for this this chapter Lord the things that we could learn help us to be skillful in our service for you whether it's music soul winning preaching whatever we do for you Lord help us to do it well help us to do our secular jobs well whether it's plumbing electrical carpentry whatever help us to do our best. And Lord I just pray that every marriage in our church we blessed help us to be exclusively for our spouse and not to flirt with or or get too close to people of the opposite gender Lord help us to reserve those feelings and affections for our spouse only Lord and help us also to not not get crazy and unrealistic about our expectations about marriage in Jesus name we pray.